


colors bleeding into one that hasn't got a name

by aphrodite_mine



Category: Black Swan (2010)
Genre: Ballet, Community: rainbow_support, Eating Disorders, Familial Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 17:59:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pieces of Nina. Written for a rainbow_support commission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	colors bleeding into one that hasn't got a name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jb_slasher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jb_slasher/gifts).



Nina nods, her head dropping back, dipping forward, her shoulders tucked up to her ears, her body moving like a rag doll. She flops, collapses. "Yes," she whispers, her teeth clinking together on the final jerk. Her mother takes her hands away and Nina feels them still pressed into the skin of her arms, letting her wings fall limp, ignoring the red that blossoms up in four lines. The fifth is hidden inside, where she'll stretch and poke later, steam from the bath heating her skin into the same shade. Her mother's face cracks open, splitting down the middle and her teeth show. "Very good," she says, and her tongue sticks in her mouth and the words sound wet. She crouches down on the kitchen floor and looks up instead of down at Nina's face, extending her claws to take Nina's hand. Her thumb moves slowly back and forth across the skin and Nina's heart slows from galloping horse to pigeon. She feels her lips move (she didn't mean it) and coos, a dove now, into her mother's arms.

*

They sing happy birthday, out of tune and drawn out, their voices struggling to fill the apartment. "Come on," her mother says, pinching Nina's shoulder, "come help me blow out the candles." Nina squishes her eyes shut, counts to three, and blows. Her lips are a tunnel and the air that speeds through spells out the notes of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Her lips are a wish and a promise and another year older.

*

She forgets about the light under the door, curling up under her covers on her side, the program on the pillow next to her head. She's brushed her hair in fifty strokes, the damp strands catching and tugging. She's been kissed and tucked in, the tinkling twirl of her miniature companion counting out beats until Nina's mother has gone to bed. She forgets about the light under the door and falls asleep touching Beth's face.

Nina counts out the letters, tracing the curve of a neck she knows by heart. "B, e, t, h," she whispers, filling the silence the music box has left.

When she wakes over the crumpled program, she cries ugly and scratches a hole in her skin.

*

She collects a new piece for every one she loses. Another coat of pink paint and her fingers close around a bottle of nail polish, the acidy smell clinging to the inside of her nostrils when she decorates each pinky in Shrinking Violet. Another serving of cake upended in porcelain, the burning sweetness stuck in her throat and she sneaks into Beth's dressing room during curtain call, touches each hot bulb and swallows whole gallons of air tinged with burnt flesh. She leaves her fingertips behind and takes an earring. It rests against the pink velvet of her music box for months, suspended, waiting for her.

*

Lily moves like melting caramel.

Like something delicate and forbidden, crystallizing.

Nina leans close and circles, pecking at crumbs. She draws in a breath of air, tinged with the scent of her, with the scent of Lily, sticky sweet and dark and smooth and doused in sweat. Nina squishes her eyes shut, the light in the room thinned to a line. Lily is blurred, moving. Her arms make smooth arcs, her feet take steps in twos. She bends and curves and blends and turns. She melts into the floor and rises up again.

Nina counts time and feels her body jerking like the dying notes of her music box. Clicking in place, perfect, precise.

*

"No," she shouts, and Nina can feel her body growing straighter, stronger. She can feel her body pouring into the hidden spaces. She takes steps, extends her claws, and smiles when her mother's head bobs, sad and lifeless. She smiles when her mother says the same word, but says it like an old prayer, offered up but unheard.


End file.
